Skyforge

If I don't like a game I will not comment on it, because I don't want to be a buzz kill for others playing the game. I had high hopes for this game and I was disappointed. However this was different, it felt like a money grab. I expected more integrity from the allodds team. I was happy at first that other toggers were playing this game. Now I am not so happy. However its seems like not much is going to change from now till open beta. Therefore give it thorough test drive in the next beta. My personal belief is that they are selling an unfinished product.

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I think all impressions, pro and con, should be expressed. There's a difference between endless negativity and honest "Yeah, I don't like ..." feedback.

I'm a sandbox nut and with the plethora around at the moment, I've taken to watching Worth a Buy (google it, hilarious, language is bleeped out so it's mostly SFW) to get an idea what a game is like before I fire the wallet cannon at the screen.

Just a heads up/warning for anyone who has the My.com client installed and running at startup (its default setting).
It turns out this client uses P2P transfers by default and has the option "Continue seeding when download complete" turned on.

I launched it up today and noticed the patch downloading at >32MB/s. Something way beyond my max network speed. I was downloading from the second computer in the house that had already installed it.

I have since turned off the option to share the installer on all machines in the house. I don't appreciate it consuming my bandwidth without asking me.

Just a heads up/warning for anyone who has the My.com client installed and running at startup (its default setting).
It turns out this client uses P2P transfers by default and has the option "Continue seeding when download complete" turned on.

I launched it up today and noticed the patch downloading at >32MB/s. Something way beyond my max network speed. I was downloading from the second computer in the house that had already installed it.

I have since turned off the option to share the installer on all machines in the house. I don't appreciate it consuming my bandwidth without asking me.

4. Prestige scales game difficulty (increases monster health and damage). If you don't want to increase the difficulty, stop unlocking nodes on the higher atlas! (refer to #3)
5. Unique class specific drops are only available once you've unlocked the class.
6. Weekly caps can be reached in about 17-20 hours of game time. At which point all you'll get are celestial threads.

7. Celestial threads are a bloody waste of time. Don't farm for them.
8. After installing the game client, go into your game launcher and turn off "continue seeing game client when download complete".
9. Don't play Paladin. No really... stop playing the Paladin no matter where you are!

10. Green nodes on the atlas increase your proficiency score (gear score).
11. There are significant changes being made to the adept / orders system as well as prestige based group requirements (from developer announcement).
12. Pay to win coming to Skyforge (screenshot from Russian OBT) in the form of attribute progression using Argent credits. Currently they are mystery nodes on the higher atlas.

12a. Russian OBT players paying for certain things are reporting that they can bypass credit caps and progress at around 200% rate of free to play. The joys of pay to win.
13. Variable difficulty selection for dungeons soon (rumor from developer/community manager).
14. Is it worth a buy? $20 yes. Other options up to you. Personally I don't see the value of the $50 or $70 packs. I reached the currencies of the $70 pack in about 50 hours of play. So all you're buying them for is the class unlocks, which is the only reason to pay that much money.

15. How do i join a party? Point your cursor at someone and bring up the quick menu, then follow the prompts. (Check your bindings). If the player is not in your vicinity, add them to your friends list using their player name (not account name) on Aelinet. Then right click their player name on your friends list and invite to party.

16. How do i join a channel? Open your game info panel (press any key that brings up your UI... K, I, L, B whatever) and look at the black bar on the bottom of the screen. Click that once and it brings up the chat console. Right click on a tab at top and you should be able to create a channel (if not available) and join it by typing in the channel name. We used "The Older Gamers" in game and a few of us started chatting in there.

17. Is there a TOG guild yet? No. Guilds are not in the game yet.
18. You can get all of the class costumes once you've finished the class tutorial in the VR simulator. The game will prompt you to go there as you progress through the story.

19. The state of the game right now: NA beta's game mechanics are BROKEN.
Russian open beta is a different game, given the extensive changes being discussed. Recommend you just wait for release if you're wondering about trying Skyforge.

The gossip of the week at Skyforge forums is the monetization annoucement, and the weekly caps. Its the most discussed topics on the SF forums on both NA/EU and amongst those in the Russian betas. I think there is a majority in wanting the credit caps removed.

The gossip of the week at Skyforge forums is the monetization annoucement, and the weekly caps. Its the most discussed topics on the SF forums on both NA/EU and amongst those in the Russian betas. I think there is a majority in wanting the credit caps removed.

Many of you have been asking for details and information on Skyforge's monetization plans and premium services. We initially planned to open a discussion on the topic once we’d rolled the system out for players to experience themselves, but with the start of Russian Open Beta the topic of monetization has become a hotbed for community speculation and debate. With this in mind, we’d like to take a moment to address some of the most pressing questions regarding monetization the community has brought up.

Overview – Monetization in Skyforge:

All players in Skyforge should have fun and rewarding experiences, regardless of their monetary investment in the game.

Monetization must not effect a player’s ability to access all activities (including high-end PvE and PvP).

Players can invest money in Skyforge if they want to speed up their character’s progress and get through content faster, but never at the cost of another player’s experience.

Players should not feel like they have to invest a nearly unlimited amount of time in the game to stay competitive.

Here are some of the key concerns we heard:

Can players purchase argents and credits to gain more prestige?

Players can speed up their character development with real money and progress through the game more quickly, but they don’t gain advantage in PvP or PvE activities, since matchmaking only matches players in the same prestige brackets. Accelerated progression will simply mean you are matched against players of a similar prestige power range. These may simply be players who have been playing Skyforge for longer, or players who have more free time in which to play.

Some mechanics require argents, are they pay-only?

No. Players may trade credits for argents via the Market at any time.
Will the player who invested the most money have the most prestige?
While paying players will be able to reach a higher prestige faster, the amount of credits a player may invest in character development is limited overall.

Each of the four core progression mechanics will have its own hard cap, essentially preventing players from completely “buying up” a character. (Please note: Not all of these limits are implemented in the current CBT version.)

Weapon Enhancements are limited by mastery currency which has a weekly cap.

Ascension Atlas Progression is limited by sparks, which cannot be purchased and are only obtained by actively playing the game. Sparks are also limited by a weekly cap.

An Order’s power contribution is limited by the player’s Leadership stat, which is grown by unlocking nodes in the Ascension Atlas.

Pantheon benefits will also be limited by the Leadership stat.

These caps ensure that even paying players have a baseline for character development and ensure no one has access to an unlimited source of power by paying.

Will I be able to join a Pantheon War and have a chance at winning without investing money?

Credits can allow players to get to high-end content faster, but their effect on real character power is limited and becomes even less so as the character continues to progress. Skyforge’s high-end content is designed in a way where individual player skill, group communication/coordination, tactics and ability management outweigh the influence of raw power. Dedicated players who know how to take advantage of their classes and special abilities are inherently more valuable to any Pantheon and will always be in demand for things like Pantheon Wars and Raids.

We want to participate in Pantheon Wars, but we don’t feel we can make it to the top. Does that mean we will always be dominated by the most skilled and developed Pantheons?

Pantheon Wars are built around the idea of “tiers”, where everyone can find an equal opponent to fight against and get their share of fun and awesome rewards.

We realize and respect that each individual has their own perspective and opinions on how monetization and premium game services impact their play experience, and how these should be implemented in Skyforge. As with all other Skyforge game systems we look forward to hearing your feedback and input as we constantly tweak and improve these systems to ensure they meet our goals and player expectations.

With Skyforge, we’ve made all in-game activities available to all players for free. While we allow players to increase their rate of progression by investing money in the game if they like to, our goal is to make it so players who opt to invest money never hurt the experience of players who do not.

Well below is the player interpretation from the Russian open beta (translated and dumped onto the English forums).

It comes down to being able to pay for permanent attributes / stats boost. If your credit card is already maxed, maybe consider mortgaging the house, selling your first born, or do a few bank heists. God status is expensive. :w

The longer version below:

Argent Stat Banks: Buying Stats with Argents Confirmed

Copied from RU Monetization thread since I think this deserves its own thread.

So, I've got the node figured out.

Update: The required items seem to apply to the credit cap. This makes a big difference.

Full process:

Right click node, click upgrade
Click on item with the stat you want
Click Upgrade button
1 of that item and Argents are consumed
You get stats
The Argents cost for that stat goes up
The end

The argent cost rises more and more as you upgrade, and that combined with the credit cap means it eventually reaches a point where only people who pay real money can afford to upgrade the nodes.

I'm sure some people will play semantics again, but it seems it's getting quite clear the Allods team are pulling another Allods.
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Long Version:

Items in Inventory. See bottom if wondering about the Yellow one.

So, you unlock this node here. It's the node after the Dash Symbol. This is just the first. Remember the Mystery Nodes in the CBT Atlas? These are those. There are lots. The node itself is free and does not halt progress.

Then, right click and click Upgrade. You get this:

The Item Spark things each add a different stat. The stats are weighted differently (cost different amounts of Argents and give different amounts of stats) as you can see here:

In order to upgrade, it takes 1 Stat Spark, and a certain amount of Argents. When you upgrade, the Argent cost increases for that stat.

Immortals! After the success of our second Closed Beta Test, the team is thrilled to announce the third Skyforge CBT event is just around the corner! Starting on April 22nd at 6:00am PST (3:00pm CET), players will have until May 13th to join their fellow immortals in the Divine Observatory and dive back into the world of Aelion to challenge themselves with the latest encounters CBT3 has to offer. All while continuing to providing meaningful feedback & suggestions along the way.

Those who have already downloaded the CBT2 client will not be required to re-download the game once CBT3 goes live. Simply open Game Center, go to My Games, select Skyforge Beta and hit the Play button! All characters created during CBT2 will retain their progress, allowing you to pick up where you left off.

Additionally, we will be continuing to broaden our testing pool by sending out several waves of beta invites to random players who’ve signed up through the official site! If you’ve signed up for the beta, keep your eyes peeled on your Inbox to see if you’ve been selected for this round of testing. Alternatively, you can refresh your Skyforge profile page and check if you’ve been granted a silver beta badge.

If you weren’t selected for the beta don’t worry! Throughout the beta, the team will be hosting several unique opportunities for you to win access! For more details on how you can secure access to CBT3, be sure to follow the official Skyforge Facebook page!

Here’s a quick overview of what new activities and locales you can expect to experience during CBT3:

Delushin i recommend you just wait till it is released. It will be free to play and the value of the founders pack is questionable if you just want to play a demo. It is heavily instanced, and not an open seamless world. There are some large zones that are public "open world" like but it is still an instanced area. It takes roughly 4-5 hours to "finish" each of those instances.

CBT3 has started, but there were no changes from CBT2 except they've flipped the switch and unlocked a few new areas.

A lot of disgruntled beta testers because they know the current NA/EU build is vastly different from the Russian build which is the current production version (in open beta) which will render testing NA/EU utterly pointless.

Delushin i recommend you just wait till it is released. It will be free to play and the value of the founders pack is questionable if you just want to play a demo. It is heavily instanced, and not an open seamless world. There are some large zones that are public "open world" like but it is still an instanced area. It takes roughly 4-5 hours to "finish" each of those instances.

CBT3 has started, but there were no changes from CBT2 except they've flipped the switch and unlocked a few new areas.

A lot of disgruntled beta testers because they know the current NA/EU build is vastly different from the Russian build which is the current production version (in open beta) which will render testing NA/EU utterly pointless.

Thank you for the reply and I can see that there is no value in paying to demo, I will watch this but I am starting to think that I wont be playing anything for the next 5 year cycle.

I wait in hope that this crap that is the microtransaction and booster era will eventually hit an equilibrium and return to a different state. There use to be something cool about being the pimp daddy that had the time to hit the high rank and show of the shiny armor, now you just buy it and it doesn't have the same effect. Hell I even bought $250 worth of WoW trading cards at one stage to be one of the first to have the red rocket, cosmetics yes, paid self power leveling -you can keep it. Takes the fun out of getting a group and experiencing things together.

I have supported many free to play games and still think that PoE is the only one to get content and transactions right, ok its not a massive open world but man talk about success off a small player base ... imagine what the big releases could do if they just removed all of the xp booster, gold booster and this and that booster crap and just went with cosmetics, base items, mounts, pets and flaming guns/swords.

I do thank the crap that is being released lately in that it has made me check out some really epic indie devs that I would have never otherwise seen. Oh and ESO for PS4 is shaping up to look really good so I will be revisiting that world. Each to their own but ESO has to be one of the better MMOs from a holistic point at the moment and the console version is going to be epic.

Hmm, thinking I'll see how it looks and feels on release. No one else has captured the "action movement/combat" in an mmo properly yet except a couple I reckon, and that is a huge appeal for me. 4-5 hours in one sitting is out for me too.

My wife and I played in the closed beta and in todays stress test. Despite the micro transaction base, I think the game has a lot going for it. Combat is fun, so far the cash is only an accelerant, and doesn't grant much that you couldn't get without it by playing a little longer.